PODCAST · education
This Naked Mind Podcast
by Annie Grace
Bestselling author Annie Grace invites you to explore the role of alcohol in our lives and culture without rules, pain, or judgement. Ready to make a change? Join The Alcohol Experiment - a FREE 30-day challenge designed to deliver happiness, wellbeing and self-respect. Check out The Alcohol Experiment at alcoholexperiment.com For ad inquiries, please reach out to: Network+[email protected]
Episodes
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When Doing Better Still Feels Wrong
Alcohol Freedom Coaching | EP 951 Angie puts Visine in every morning before anyone sees her eyes. Andrea has done everything right for seventy-six days and still can't shake the feeling that something's wrong with how easy it's been. The same question plagues them both: why do I think I have to...
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This Might Just Possibly Work
Pam's Naked Life | EP 950 A beer holder isn't a standard feature on a lawnmower, but Pam made it one. From grass-cutting buddy to personal therapist, she gave alcohol dozens of jobs, starting at age seven, when a sip of her mother's wine felt like "the elixir of life." Figuring out why moderation...
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Why We Drink To Cope
Alcohol Freedom Coaching | EP 949 Alcohol and emotional regulation. For a long time, they were basically the same thing for Gwen and Cynthia. Gwen can feel sure she doesn’t want to drink, then find herself wavering in a grocery store parking lot when her husband asks if she wants wine. Cynthia…
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Can You Really Forgive Yourself for Your Drinking Past?
Lisa’s Naked Life | EP 948 Trigger Warning: This episode contains references to domestic conflict, impaired driving with a minor in the vehicle, and a cancer diagnosis. Six beers in, Lisa drove her fifteen-year-old son to a friend's house. It wasn't the first time she'd driven after drinking, but...
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Facing the Fear of Change
Alcohol Freedom Coaching | EP 947 Trigger Warning: This episode mentions a pregnancy loss and substance abuse. What if it’s not giving up the substance that you fear? Deb and Rosie are both finding success in their breaks from alcohol and THC, respectively. They don’t realize it until Coaches…
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An Ultimatum to Stop Drinking
Where Are They Now? | EP 946 "I had to pick one life or the other." That's how Sabrina describes the ultimatum to stop drinking her husband gave her two years ago. Sabrina is back to catch up with Hayley and explore what happens in that time between learning to live alcohol-free and truly living…
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Are You Drinking To Check Out?
Five o'clock. It's like an internal alarm that goes off for Sandra. The day goes from manageable to get me the heck out of here as soon as the clock flips. For Lucy, it usually hits mid-afternoon: the realization that today won't be Day 1 alcohol-free after all. Drinking to check out is so normal...
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The Empty Bottles She Couldn't Stop Hiding
5 a.m., and the bottles go out before anyone's awake. A soft clink of glass against the can, quick hands, quicker steps back inside. For years this was Michelle's ritual, drink alone, hide it, wake up and do it again. A DUI didn't stop it. A year and a half without a drink during COVID didn't…
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Why Do I Think Something Is Wrong With Me?
Trigger Warning: This episode mentions death by suicide and death from alcohol use. Something is wrong with me. Five words, but they can resonate in your brain over and over again for decades. That's the reality Lisa and Michelle have been living with day in and day out. To the point where…
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The Job That Almost Kept Her Drinking
How do you quit drinking when your job is getting other people to drink? For years, that was Kelly's daily reality. She sampled wine and liquor with retailers all day, then went out drinking with her coworkers once the samples were done, and some nights she couldn't drive home afterward. She kept…
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How Honest Can You Be?
Trigger warning: This episode mentions disordered eating and self-harm. “You either drink, or you don’t,” Kelly’s husband actually said to her. If only it were that simple, like there’s a switch you can just flick and the desire to drink evaporates. While that might be true for some people, most…
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I Am Not Drinking Again
Twenty-four hours of food poisoning on an all-inclusive holiday, and Helen's body made a decision before her mind caught up. She'd been drinking that week too, the way she always did with her sister, and somewhere in the middle of being violently sick she found herself pleading with her own...
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I Never Gave Myself a Chance
What does it take to stop shaming yourself for drinking again? Sarah and Katie are trying to figure that out. It's easy to say that you need to change through compassion, self-love, and empathy, but putting that into practice is a much different story. Coach Hayley and Coach Cole use their…
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How to Quit Drinking as a Mom
Six years ago, Payal looked in the mirror the morning after a blackout and finally had enough of herself. She's back on Where Are They Now to talk about how to quit drinking as a mom when mommy wine culture makes it feel normal, and what six years actually built: a dad and two sisters who gave up...
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Regular Drinkers Don't Exist
Learning how to stop feeling left out when you quit drinking starts, for Brenda, with a very specific list: people who can supposedly drink like it's nothing and never seem to pay for it. Kate's experience looks different: a friend in recovery who stopped getting invited to things, and a dinner...
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Drinking Out of Boredom
Trigger Warning: This episode includes mentions of a medical emergency and a homicide. Sunday morning, and Brenda can't get out of bed. Her head is pounding hard enough that she genuinely believes she might die from it, so she turns over and doesn't get up again until one in the afternoon. She'd...
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When You Quit and They Don't
Trigger warning: This episode contains references to disordered eating and the death of a parent following a medical complication. “I'm actually on day twenty-six alcohol-free right now, the first time since I was pregnant with my daughter,” Bethany says. Bev has been counting differently: hers...
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The Drink Responsibly Myth | Interview - The Shift
Annie Grace grew up in a cabin with no running water, no electricity, and a dad who never drank. A decade later, in a corporate job in New York City, she was pouring close to two bottles of wine a night, buying the boxed kind so nobody would notice when one ran out. In this episode, she sits down...
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Why One Drink Never Stays One Drink
Why can’t I just have one drink? For Pamela, that question comes from her struggle to moderate her drinking, and for Claude, it sits in her fear of never being able to drink again. Same question but from two very different perspectives. Coaches Cole and Hayley work with Pamela and Claude to...
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Twenty-Five Years Trying to Quit Drinking
Judd never considered that he would quit drinking before turning forty. After all, for twenty-five years he would pick the idea up and put it down as regularly as if it were his morning coffee. But one day he picked up a receipt for a book he'd bought two years earlier yet never read. Suddenly…
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Stop Borrowing Confidence From a Glass
What does it take to figure out how to stop relying on alcohol for confidence? Amy needed eleven months alcohol-free, followed by more stops and starts than a city bus has, to decide something needed to change. For Dee, it was an entire wedding weekend and the fear of being the only one without a...
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62 Wasn't Too Old to Stop Drinking
Deb's Naked Life | EP 920 If you're thinking about stopping drinking in your 60s but keep telling yourself you're too old, too set in your habits, or too far gone, Deb's story is the one you need to hear. She was a registered nurse who had directed a hospital addiction recovery program and still...
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Who Am I Without Alcohol?
⚠️ Trigger warning: This episode contains references to domestic violence and a mental health crisis. Who am I without alcohol? Does that question sound eerily familiar? Steph and Nicole both find themselves grappling with that very idea and wondering what the answer will mean for them. Steph is...
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The Life You Stop Needing to Escape
What does building a life you don't want to escape from actually take? Donna joined The Path in March 2021 after a COVID grocery store moment she couldn't unsee and hasn't had a drink since. Now five years in, she's back with Coach Hayley to share what's genuinely changed, what she's still…
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How to Give Yourself Grace About Drinking
⚠️ Trigger warning: This episode contains references to childhood abuse, parental alcoholism, and the death of a parent from alcohol-related illness. Most of us were never taught how to give ourselves grace about drinking, only how to judge ourselves for it. Kelly and Amber are proof that the…
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When Using Alcohol to Self-Soothe Stops Working
Trigger warning: This episode contains references to drunk driving, DWIs, and thoughts of not wanting to live. Zita was in her kitchen in 2017, working up the nerve for a hard conversation with her boyfriend, when the thought arrived: "You know what would make this easier?" She took a shot to...
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The Real Reason You Drink
⚠️ Trigger warning: This episode contains references to psychological and emotional abuse in a marriage. The answer to "why I use alcohol to cope" is rarely what you expect. For Will, it’s buried in a need for control he's carried since a chaotic childhood. For Kathleen, it comes from decades of...
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How Grief Built Perfectly Made AF
Trigger warning: This episode contains references to the alcohol-related death of a family member. Is it possible to build something meaningful out of the worst loss of your life? For Kelly, the answer arrived just five months after she got free from alcohol herself. That's when her brother died...
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Are You Drinking To Escape?
Trigger Warning: This episode contains discussion of traumatic brain injury. Are you drinking to escape your life? Catherine was. She called it the escape room. Rachael didn't use those words, but she'd no doubt agree with them. If you're drinking to escape a life that feels like too much, too...
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I Was A Functional Drinker For 32 Years
For 32 years, Travis was a functional drinker who never got a DUI, never missed a day of work, and never fit the picture most people hold when they hear "drinking problem," but spent years hiding beers in the garage, lying to his wife about the count, and woke up after one Christmas morning…
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Why You Drink To Fit In
Andrew and Adele both know why they need alcohol to socialize — or think they do. For Adele, 64 and living in a New Zealand wine region, it started at 14 in the back of a school bus and never really stopped being about fitting in. For Andrew, who is navigating a late-life ADHD diagnosis and the...
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Summer of Love
In Summer of Love, Kerri Maher writes about wine country glamour, shame that runs across generations, and the woman at the center who can't quite say out loud what she knows about herself. She lived that from the inside before she could write it clearly. She read Annie Grace's This Naked Mind in...
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Why You Keep Going Back To Alcohol
Alcohol Freedom Coaching | EP 919 If you're trying to figure out how to stop drinking for good, you’ll want to tune in for this episode. Shannon is 14 days alcohol-free and the first person on either side of her family to ever try changing their drinking — and every time a family member sets down...
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When AA Isn’t Working
Tim's Naked Life | EP 918 When AA isn't working, most people assume they're the problem — not committed enough, not broken enough, not at rock bottom enough to figure it all out and make a change. Tim Kelly thought that too. A 30-year sales professional who'd always been able to muscle through...
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When Alcohol Is The Only Coping Tool You Know
Alcohol Freedom Coaching | EP 917 What happens when you finally want to stop using alcohol to cope, but the idea of facing everything without it feels almost impossible? In this episode, Kim and Liv bravely step into that very question. They open up about just how easily alcohol became a source…
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How One Mom Stopped Drinking
Sabrina’s Naked Life | EP 916 Trigger Warning: This episode includes mentions of an eating disorder. What does it really take to stop drinking when every warning sign you've been handed just isn't enough? Sabrina grew up watching her father drive drunk, got her own DUI at 17, and spent years...
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Feeling Raw? That Means It's Working | Alcohol Freedom Coaching | EP 915
Trigger Warning: This episode contains references to suicidal ideation, childhood trauma, family violence, and mental illness. Laura has been alcohol-free since Christmas and the voice in her head keeps saying: this isn't going to work for you. Patricia is 83 days in, standing outside in minus-17...
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High-Functioning Doesn't Mean Fine | Tim’s Naked Life | EP 914
Is your life mostly intact — job fine, marriage okay, responsibilities covered — and yet you're drinking every single night and can't quite picture stopping? That's exactly where Tim Knapp was for years, and he was also, at the same time, one of the people other people called in a crisis. He…
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Breaking the Drinking Cycle, Finding Yourself | Alcohol Freedom Coaching | EP 913
Have you ever gotten exactly what you wanted, only to wait for something to go wrong? That's where Brenda is in today's episode — alcohol-free, feeling like herself again, and quietly afraid to believe it will last. In the second session, Emma has spent five years in a cycle she can't seem to...
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The Book That Changed His Mind Twice| Jonathan's Naked Life | EP 912
Ever used drinking to cope with grief and felt like it wasn’t even a conscious choice but rather a reflex? Jonathan knows that feeling exactly. He'd been living alcohol-free for two and a half years when he lost his father-in-law and then his dad, just months apart, during the pandemic. On the...
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Why Do I Keep Going Back to Drinking? | Alcohol Freedom Coaching | EP 911
What if the thing keeping you stuck isn't a lack of willpower, but a lack of understanding what's really driving you back? Linda has nearly 100 days alcohol-free and is starting to wonder if she trusts herself more than she thinks she does. Jane is asking a question she's carried for decades: why...
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Breaking the Alcohol Shame Spiral | Krista's Naked Life | EP 910
What does it take to finally break the alcohol shame spiral when it's been running your life for decades? Krista knows the cycle well: a data point, the crushing shame that followed, a vow to do better, and then the slow, sneaky creep back to hiding bottles and pulling over on the side of the…
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When Grief and Drinking Go Hand in Hand | Alcohol Freedom Coaching | EP 909
Trigger Warning: This episode includes conversations about grief, loss of loved ones, family estrangement, trauma, and depression. Have you ever been in so much pain that reaching for a drink just felt like the most human thing to do? That is exactly where today's two guests have been, and this...
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How I Stopped Drinking After Trying To Moderate | Michele’s Naked Life | EP 908
Wondering how I stopped drinking after trying to moderate for years? "Have I got a story for you!" says Michele. She ran a business, raised her daughter, kept things moving — and drank every night in a relationship where no one questioned it. Then the pandemic stripped away her structure, her...
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How to Rebuild Self-Worth After Drinking | Alcohol Freedom Coaching | EP 907
Trigger warning: This episode contains references to domestic violence, suicidal ideation, & self-harm ideation. If you've been wondering how to rebuild self-worth after drinking, this episode will meet you right where you are. Coach Zoe coaches Katia through the power of her "alive goal" —...
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How Coaching Helped Me Change My Drinking | JiAna's Naked Life | EP 906
What if the thing you thought was holding your life together was actually pulling you under? JiAna spent years reaching for alcohol not because she wanted to drink but because she was living in relentless pain and nobody had anything better to offer her. Between a chronic illness that left her on...
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Why Willpower Fails With Alcohol — and What Actually Works Instead | Alcohol Freedom Coaching | EP 905
Have you ever done everything "right" and still felt like alcohol had the upper hand? You're not alone — and there's a really good reason for that. Coach Hayley coaches M through the fear and doubt swirling around her upcoming break, while Coach Zoe helps Lawrence see that his drinking is…
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Rewiring My Mindset Around Drinking | Anne's Naked Life | EP 904
What happens when the thing you're most afraid to lose is also the thing quietly costing you everything? Anne grew up in a home where five o'clock cocktails were as reliable as the sunset. Drinking was culture, celebration, and comfort, and for a long time, it felt completely earned. But through...
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Letting Go of Shame and Finding Freedom | Alcohol Freedom Coaching | EP 903
Does it ever feel like you know everything there is to know about why you drink, and none of it is enough to make you stop? You're not alone in that. In this episode, Coaches Hayley and Cole each sit with a Path member who's been carrying that exact weight. Audrey has 20 years of binge drinking…
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Beyond Moderation and White-Knuckling | Where Are They Now? - Calley | EP 902
What is gray area drinking for women – and what happens when “drink less” slowly turns into “I don’t even want this anymore”? In this Where Are They Now conversation, Calley returns after first appearing on the podcast in October 2019 to share what seven years alcohol-free really looks like....
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Bestselling author Annie Grace invites you to explore the role of alcohol in our lives and culture without rules, pain, or judgement. Ready to make a change? Join The Alcohol Experiment - a FREE 30-day challenge designed to deliver happiness, wellbeing and self-respect. Check out The Alcohol Experiment at alcoholexperiment.com
For ad inquiries, please reach out to: Network+[email protected]
HOSTED BY
Annie Grace
CATEGORIES
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